Breaking a too-long radio silence born of work stress…
Anyhow, leading indicator: SMSes in the office. Intra-office SMSing. Why? You may step away from your computer, but you always have your phone with you.
(Other contributory factors: European coworkers, large enough office to make running all over looking for someone a drag, smartphones assigned to all senior managers. But give it five three years, you’ll be doing it too.)
Overheard at First Saturday
In the quite literally mind-bending Devorah Sperber exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, in front of "After Picasso (Gertrude Stein)." Dramatis personæ: two older women, part of the First Saturday crowd.
Woman #1: Do you think she made that herself?
Woman #2: The artist?
Woman #1: Gertrude Stein.
Woman #2: (a bit nonplussed) No, that's not... Anyway, isn't she dead?
Woman #1: That doesn't mean she couldn't have made this.
At this point, I had to walk away.
In my almost-nonexistent standing as a Stein Expert, or at least a person who has read more Gertrude Stein than most, I think she would like the piece, as long as she saw it as a celebration of Picasso rather than a critique of him. I don't think the work necessarily takes a stand on Picasso either way. But I do that that Sperber's use of spools of sewing thread, the tools of a feminized craft, to revisit masterworks of the western art canon is a form of feminist critique about a billion times subtler and more interesting than most of what I saw in the Global Feminisms exhibit, which felt almost unbearably obvious and dated. (The Kara Walker wall being a notable exception - I always forget how tremendous her work is in person. Remind me next time, will you?)
In which I taste sweet, sweet victory
This weekend, I was honored to be an invited speaker at the IDSA North-east Division's regional conference, which was held at the Rhode Island School of Design. Woot! It's always nice to revisit College Hill -- I went to Brown, so I get all nostalgic about my theory-head SGML-coding 21-year-old self, who I think would be surprised but not disappointed to learn that the SGML has turned out to be at least as important in my life as the theory.
Highlights of the bits of the conference I was able to attend:
- Hearing Jon Kolko tell an audience of industrial designers and ID students that the really cool new design job to aim for was something called "information architect." I am so telling all my ID colleagues.
- Allen Chochinov of Core77's line "if you're as smart as you bill you are," which I am, I warn you all now, stealing.
- The conversation I had with three-fourths of the IxDA lunchtime panel members on the ride up, which was at least as enlightening as their pretty terrific panel was.
Kurt Vonnegut
When I was in college, and working as a temp in midtown over the summer, I would take lunches sometimes in the public space in the ground floor of the Philip Morris building. There was a gallery associated with some New York museum, I forget which, though I remember the Laurie Anderson retrospective that was hung there. The space also had a nice set of steps well-proportioned for sitting and reading, and tables where one could sit and eat. I think the space is still open to the public, although it's now the Altria Group building, you could go check it out for yourself.
Anyway, I worked a series of lame temp jobs in that general area, and would go there for lunch whenever I could, so I can't tell you exactly when this happened. But one day, my head was still half in the book I'd been reading as I walked towards the stairs and the door, and I didn't notice the guy sitting on the steps until I'd tripped over his foot.
"Oh!" I said when I recovered. "I'm --"
And then I stopped. Because I realized I'd tripped over Kurt Vonnegut.
Now, when you trip over some random man's foot in the lobby of the Philip Morris building, you don't expect it to be the author whose books you collected in a series of matched trade paperbacks through high school and into college. And when you're as lousy at face recognition as I am, you certainly don't expect to know that person on sight.
I was struck utterly dumb. He smiled, did one of those "don't worry about it" nod things, and I walked off on my way. I spent most of the rest of the day alternating between wishing I'd said something more and knowing that perhaps that wouldn't have been the right moment to say anything anyhow.
What strikes me now, mumblety-odd years on and not having thought of that story in years, is not just the sweetly New York oddity of authors being so thick on the ground that one is tripping over them, but how nice he was about the whole thing, the getting overlooked and then the starstruck silence. He was a mensch, take him all in all. I still have a couple of those trade paperbacks, too.
More learning from Las Vegas
1. The strip is designed to keep you inside casinos. Inside my hotel (the Flamingo, because we information architects like to kick it old-school), every path you can take is designed to take you through or into a casino. The rooms don’t even have those terrible hotel-room coffee makers, which I presume is to get you downstairs, near where you could spend money, without caffeine. It’s bizarrely fascinating.
2. The keynote speaker at the conference has an office literally down the block from where I work. I walk past his building at least a couple of times a week. And yet I don’t think I would ever have just walked in to say hello. Now we’ve exchanged cards, and I’m hoping he or someone from his firm will come address our brown-bag series in the works.
3. Steven, in comments to my last post, directed me to the geeky story behind the Bellagio water display, which has made me unreasonably happy. Thank you, Steven!
4. I’ve seen the room where I’m presenting. I’m definitely going to need to run for a presentation-clicker. (I bought one in New York, which is… um, I think still on my bed at home.)